The present invention is directed to a protective cover for a fill port. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a self-adhering protective cover for a fill port for a pressurized gas regulator.
Pressure regulators are commonly known devices that are often present between a pressurized gas source and a device that uses the pressurized gas. Typically, the regulators regulate the flow of gas from the source to the target device in order to maintain the pressure of the target device at a desired level.
In one industry in which pressure regulators are prevalent, the paint ball industry, pressure regulators are used between a compressed gas bottle and the trigger mechanism of the paint ball gun. The pressure regulator is configured to reduce the pressure from the bottle to a desired, preset pressure at the gun trigger. Such regulators can take down or reduce the pressure from as high as 7500 psi to 1500 psi or less.
Typically, the bottles that are used for paint ball and used in connection with paint ball guns are relatively small, portable bottles that can be either mounted to the guns or carried by a user, for example, in a harness on a user's back. In that paintball gun technology has advanced to the point where thousands of rounds of paintballs can be fired per minute, the amount of compressed gas that is used in a single outing or tournament can be quite substantial.
In order to eliminate the need to remove the connections between the bottle and the gun in order to refill a bottle, a fill port is often located on the regulator to permit refilling the bottle directly while the bottle remains fully connected to the gun. Such a fill port typically is a threaded connection that includes a check valve in the form of a stem and head located within the fill port. In filling the bottle, a temporary fill connection is made directly to the fill port on the regulator and pressurized gas is fed from a source directly into the bottle. Once the bottle is filled, the temporary source is disconnected from the fill port on the regulator, the check valve seals the fill port, and play can resume.
In order to prevent contamination of the regulator and/or compressed gas in the bottle, dust/contamination covers are used to cover the fill port. Known fill port protective covers are simply rubber nipples that are friction fitted over the end of the port to prevent contamination. While these covers serve their functions well, they are often knocked from the fill port or dislodged during use. In that a typical paintball gun may be subject to rigorous motion during use, it has been observed that these protective covers frequently dislodge and fall from the fill ports. This, of course, provides an ingress path for contamination into the regulators and perhaps into the compressed gas within the bottle.
Accordingly, there is a need for a self-sealing contamination/protective cover for regulator fill ports. Desirably, such a cover is inexpensive and is readily installed on and removed from the fill port. Most desirably, such protective cover remains affixed to the fill port and, when removed, leaves no residue on the fill port, such as adhesive residues.